We know what to expect from Richard Hawley by now – lovely old fashioned guitar sounds, unhurried riffs and a laid-back, soothing voice which puts a wall between you and the real world with the first silken syllable.

If ever music embodied that feeling of being at home late with a cuppa on a rainy winter’s night, with traffic swishing past outside and the city’s thousand lights scattered across every wet surface then Richard Hawley is it.  I remember the Pogues writing a song after Shane MacGowan left (I think Jem Finer wrote it actually) called Small Hours.  It’s not the greatest song they ever recorded, but it was about the comfort and pedestrian, everyday intimacy of finally closing the door on the world at the end of the day.  In fact, For Your Lover Give Some Time is a gorgeous take on almost the exact same sentiment, and one of the standout songs on this album.

Almost every song Richard Hawley has ever sung evokes that kind of feeling in me, sometimes so strongly that it overwhelms any other reaction to the music – it’s just nurturing and reassuring, irrespective of the character of the individual songs.

His last couple of albums have been pop albums and no mistake.  The swell of strings and easy but unmistakably danceable shuffle of drums have permeated both Lady’s Bridge and Cole’s Corner, and so when I first began to absorb the glacial pace of this album I experienced something of a false start – my expectations were set to a slightly quicker pace and consequently I rather overshot the record on the first couple of listens.  This typically well-phrased review on the Daily Growl, however, ensured I went back again.

Slow yourself down to the pace at which Truelove’s Gutter demands that you move, however, and you’ll find this as richly rewarding as any album Hawley has released.  It’s gorgeous, intimate and heartfelt, but you yourself really do have to be on the right setting or you’ll shoot right by before you even notice it’s there.

Richard Hawley – Ashes on the Fire

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Richard Hawley – Don’t Get Hung Up in Your Soul

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And a little bit of a bonus for you:

The Pogues – Small Hours

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Fucking hell this is dreadful.  Really, annoyingly, frustratingly bad.  It starts out like the fucking Bee Gees, but fortunately ratchets it back from toe-curlingly awful to merely tediously mediocre pretty much immediately and then resolutely stays there for the rest of the album.

Even the name of the band (d’you get it – d’you see what they did there?) has a self-satisfied, complacent whiff to it, and generally this whole sorry enterprise smacks of the lazy, lifeless exercise in self-congratulation and mutual backslapping which this sort of super[sic]-group stuff can so easily be accused of.

I know that accusing artists of being lazy or self-satisfied is out of order because that really is projecting states of mind onto people that you generally don’t know well enough to be making that sort of statement about, but this album really does have that sort of air about it.  Four guys (Conor Oberst, Jim James from My Morning Jacket, M Ward and producer Mike Mogis), all of whom have ‘made it’ in the world of alternative music, all getting together in a great big alt-folk fucking circle jerk of doom.  So if this isn’t lazy or self-satisfied, which it might well not be, it certainly manages to sound conspicuously like it.

Basically, musically this just dips in and out of variations on the Americana template, is played in a smooth and competent manner, and seems almost like a lacklustre covers album – some harmony-laden pop, some West Coast rock ‘n’ roll, some acoustic balladry, although even that has too much added to it.  It’s just the absolute middle of the fucking road in pretty much every respect – the tunes are okay, the sound is kinda medium American folk rock, it’s not too heavy, not too sad, not too jaunty… nothing – it’s just fucking nothing.

I am not a big fan of Conor Oberst, although I think that may be related to only being familiar with his later work, but I think his voice is probably the closest I can find to a saving grace in this MOR shitfest.  On one or two songs his sad, sincere vocals lend just enough pathos to songs generally underserving of such validation to make a couple of the tracks listenable.

And that is pretty much it.  Fucking awful.

Monsters of Folk – Temazcal

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Monsters of Folk – Baby Boomer

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I didn’t have much to say about the last Destroyer album, because it just didn’t really grab me, unfortunately.  Hearing this it seems almost like the reason for that was simply that Dan Bejar might not have been pushing it enough for my taste, because it was a very restrained and, in my view, unremarkable record.

This, on the other hand, whilst barely even an EP, is much more interesting.  It’s long, rather abstract, stitches what sound like fragments of songs together into a single quarter of an hour-long song, and is in general really quite weird and very, very good.

I still don’t entirely find myself understanding the pairing of the two songs, although perhaps the length of them is responsible for that, in that they both feel rather like sovereign entities, not necessarily requiring the other in order to be complete.  Bay of Pigs itself is presumably about the bungled US invasion of Cuba which very nearly triggered nuclear war back in the sixites, although I’ll confess that the narrative of the song itself rather escapes me.

Anyhow, the song accelerates in vignettes, ratcheting itself up from the twinkling dreamscapes of the first few minutes, into some sort of somnabulent disco and finally a sharply-strummed crest around eleven minutes in.  There it stops and seems to tumble downwards into the abyss of experimentalism again, with a building electronic rumble which allows the song to drift away back into the electronic twinkly with which it started.  It’s a strange shift, at the end there, but it’s nice and it gives the song that completeness I hinted at earlier.

It hints at other Destroyer songs as well, interweaving the odd snippet here and there, and the second song, Ravers, is a re-working of one of their past tunes as well, previously called Rivers, I think.

So yes, it’s an odd release, this.  A two-song EP clocking in at about twenty minutes in length and which really does bugger about something chronic.  If Bejar is this good when he’s being weird I’d be tempted to say that he should throw off the reigns more often, stop being so disciplined, and just go for it, because I like this notably more than a lot of his more sensible, three-minute pop song-based work.

Erm, no preview song with this I’m afraid, because there are only two songs on the album.

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The In the Fishtank series is something I think is great, something I wish I could emulate and yet nevertheless, and rather oddly, something I rarely like the results of all that much. Dutch label Konkurrent book out a studio for a couple of days and invite two bands who happen to be around to take advantage of the time to record… well, whatever they want, really.

There are a lot of things I hugely admire about this project. Firstly, I generally do not like covers at all, but I love collaborations for some reason. Not rubbish like Monsters of Folk (that’s getting a review this week, and it’s fucking awful), but musicians getting together and genuinely experimenting together in a loose sort of manner like this. They only have two days after all.

Secondly, I love the attitude the label take – we’ll bring you together, you guys do what you want. No pressure to record pop songs, singles, skew the collaboration towards certain styles, divvy the writing up equally, or even to produce anything listenable at all. The results may not always work, but projects like this, at the edge of what we’d call pop music, are important for pushing everyone forward, be it labels, the audience or musicians themselves.

Sparklehorse are one of my favourite bands, but I don’t really know much about Fennesz. Listening to this there’s none of the fairly traditional song structure I am used to on a Sparklehorse record, so I assume a lot of that came from Fennesz, but you can certainly hear an awful lot of familiar sounds so Linkous’ involvement is clear enough.

The experimental nature of a lot of this – Shai-Hulud is, er, a little much for me – means that this is another of those collaborations which I love to hear of but at times don’t exactly like to listen to. I am, for all the readers of this site make fun of my taste for low-fi noise, still pretty much a song-based music fan and there’s a fair bit of this collaboration which is simply too lacking in traditional song structure for me to be able to really relate to it.

Nevertheless, there are a few gems, and when Fennesz fuck with Linkous’ songs, bringing all sorts of mess to the recording, then I really do enjoy it. Some of this is really, really good. It’s another In the Fishtank record I guess I would classify as something I admire and something I find interesting rather than something I necessarily would always listen to for pleasure. But then, that’s how I’d describe Joseph Conrad’s books as well, so it’s no insult.

Sparklehorse + Fennesz – Goodnight Sweetheart

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Sparklehorse + Fennesz – Shai – Hulud

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There really is no better way to describe X Lion Tamer than in Tony’s own words: “Sounds like the ending credits of low budget 80s teen movies – played on your mate’s Amiga.”

Signed to 17 Seconds Records, X Lion Tamer has two download singles to his name, recently compiled onto a four-track CD EP called Neon Hearts which is, I believe, available in various record shops around Edinburgh.

Every time I write about X Lion Tamer I find myself using the slightly insulting line “I shouldn’t like this”.  It’s not intended to be insulting though, it’s just that listening to the general sound, it’s not really like anything else in my music collection.  The sheer 80s disco-dancing nature of it is the very kind of sound which makes me take something of a step backwards immediately, and yet and yet and yet…

Well what it comes down to is the fact that it’s just infectious as fuck, I guess.  No matter how I want to classify it, it quite simply happens to be incredibly hummable and bouncy.  The songs themselves aren’t exactly frivolous, but the music is jaunty as hell and he has the kind of knack with a tune that means you only have to hear these songs once before you’ll recognise them pretty much instantly, and that’s no mean feat.

X Lion Tamer – Tugboat

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This is an oddly tricky review to write, because I am so familiar with all of these songs already.  This album sees Robert Fisher and a bare-bones band revisit their back catalogue and rework an album’s worth of material in more low-fi style that than in which it was (generally) first released.

This recording was done with a small group of musicians who formed the core of the band in the early days and, according to the website, is intended to capture the “living room nature” of their early performances.

Those of us who have seen the band live a couple of times won’t be all that surprised by this project, because the band seems to work this way most of the time anyway: they can be as grand or as minimal as you like, and no song seems to have a particular need to sound a certain way – Fisher and the band simply adapt the songs to the arrangements available at the time.  Even in my limited (four gigs) experience, I have heard a lot of these songs played several times, and sound very different each time.  Consequently it’s little surprise that they might want to commit some of these other incarnations to record – in a way it’s a little silly for a band who can sound so different from one gig to another to have only one recorded version of each song available.

As it is the new versions, even when I like them less than the originals, which inevitably happens a couple of times, are wonderful to listen to.  The scratchy renditions of the likes of Ghost of the Girl in the Well actually bring a little more unpleasantness to the song which enhances the rather nasty nature of the original lyrics, similarly with Mary of the Angels. Skeleton is completely different, without the full band drive of the version on Let it Roll, and whilst I prefer the originals of the likes of Fare the Well and Painter Blue, these recordings certainly more than do the songs justice.

Which brings me to why I find this a difficult album to review.  I am a big fan of this band, so I am fascinated by all of these songs, but I genuinely can’t imagine what they would sound like to someone new to the music.  You lose something by the low-fi approach, but you gain something as well, and I know what that brings to someone who knows the music, but if this is the first time you’ve encountered this band then you’re own your own.

In many ways this is entirely representative of their work, and in many ways it really isn’t.  It’s just the sound of a band who like to play with their music exploring what the songs can sound like and giving them a whole new character.  In many ways I am actually just surprised that more groups don’t do this kind of thing.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – Ghost of the Girl in the Well

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Willard Grant Conspiracy – Mary of the Angels

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This week’s job is the finishing of the Honeytrap Toad Session, preparing the second Toad House Gig for Friday – brilliant brilliant brilliant! – sort of getting ready for the Toad Autumn Party at the Bowery on the 10th (Pineapple Chunky madness, woo!) and getting the Meursault singles pressed and the artwork sorted.  If I am dead by the weekend, do not be surprised.

Fortunately, the start of the week is relatively light on gigs.  Lightish anyway.  Tonight is free, so I should get a chunk done then.  I just fear the traditional upload hell which tends to accompany the finishing of these bloody videos.  Vimeo is a great service in many ways, but the uploading is flaky as fuck and incredibly annoying.  Still, that’s presumably a matter for Friday at 4am, if the FOUND session is anything to go by.

Tuesday 29th September 2009: The Blank Tapes & Magic Leaves at the Bowery.

I really like it when people around me get all giddy about the visit of bands I’ve never heard of – it makes going to a gig that much more exciting.  This is one of those gigs

Wednesday 30th September 2009: Wild Beasts & The Kays Lavelle at Cabaret Voltaire.

These guys are just on the edge of stuff I like – some of it I absolutely love and some I find just a little bit too much.  It’s camp and loose, but they write terrific pop songs nevertheless and I am really looking forward to seeing them live to get a bit more of a clue about their personality as a band.

Wild Beasts – Hooting & Howling

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Thursday 1st October 2009: Leith Tape Club at the Iso Lounge, with Animal Magic Tricks and Men Diamler.

The Leith Tape Club is a lovely night, with a small capacity and an initmate atmosphere, and conveniently right around the corner from my work.

Thursday 1st October: Meursault, Three Blind Wolves & Washington Irving at Sneaky Pete’s.

Three Blind Wolves are apparently Ross Clark-related, although I have to confess I know nothing about them.  Washington Irving are another new one on me, but I think we all know quite enough about Meursault by now.

Friday 2nd October 2009: X Lion Tamer & Nite Jewel at Sneaky Pete’s.

I don’t know why I like X Lion Tamer, exactly.  All that synthy 80s pop should be way more than I can handle, but oddly I find myself really enjoying it – basically I suppose because the songs are just incredibly catchy.  Night Jewel, I have to confess, I know almost nothing about.

X Lion Tamer – Neon Hearts

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Friday 2nd October: Animal Magic Tricks & Men Diamler play the second Toad House Gig.

These house gigs look like turning into really nice things.  The last one was bloody lovely, and with the lovely Animal Magic tricks and Men Diamler, whose music can be as mental as it can lovely I think this one will be a fantastic night.

Animal Magic Tricks – Smallish Hooves

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Friday 2nd October: Trespassers William, Glissando & eagleowl at the Wee Red Bar.

Gizeh Records’ allstar tour comes to Edinburgh, supported by local sorts The Kays Lavelle and eagleowl.  I have to confess I rather feared for eagleowl, who were somewhat threatened by a recent combination of relocation and fornication, but seeing them back playing (superbly) at the Withered Hand EP launch last week has cheered me right up.  They have about seven new songs recorded too, you know.  I’ve no idea what they’re going to do with them, but they have them, which is tantalising, but definitely rather excellent news.

Saturday 3rd October: Kid Canaveral EP launch at the Bowery, with Come On Gang and Cancel the Astronauts.

This lineup is ridiculously indie-pop-tastic, with Edinburgh’s three finest lining up in a show of defiance to all that moany indie-folk shit I insist on listening to.  This stuff is all about the infectiousness of the tunes, and Kid Canaveral are perhaps the most hummable band in the city.  Their new EP is out on download or, erm, tape.  Yes, tape.  Good fucking grief, it’ll be wax cylinders or fucking eight track next.

Kid Canaveral – Couldn’t Dance

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Right, given we’ve come down to Manchester for the Meursault gig, I thought I might make a podcast based around the two years I spent living here.  As I mentioned on this week’s Friday Five, however, those were really not very happy times so basically this podcast is just a great big hour-long whinge about how shit my life was a couple of times a few years ago.

Nah, not really.  I mean, I do describe why life was tough then but it really isn’t just a great big moan, I promise.  For some reason the music in my life at those times seems to have really stuck in my head and become incredibly strongly associated with the period in question.  Partly, I suppose, because the emotional succour you get from music when things are a bit rough is something you’re grateful enough for for it to really form an important connection.

The other aspect is that on both those occasions I had so little music with me that the stuff I did have got played over and over again, so a really small amount of stuff really dominated my listening habits at that point, and became incredibly strongly intertwined with all of my memories of the time.  So, er, yes.  Here you go: The Manchester Podcast.

Toadcast #88 – The Manchester Podcast

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01. Pearl Jam – Dissident (03.16)
02. The Newcranes – Box of Shadows (08.53)
03. James – Say Something (17.17)
04. The Lemonheads – Into Your Arms (20.30)
05. Blur – Clover Over Dover (27.00)
06. Yo La Tengo – On Our Way to Fall (39.47)
07. Moby – Southside (41.31)
08. Calexico – Removed (48.10)
09. Jolene – Constantinople (51.46)
10. The Magnetic Fields – Yeah! Oh, Yeah! (57.57)

This weekend there will be a trip to Manchester. Meursault have a gig there – in the Saki Bar on Saturday, I think – and Mrs. Toad and I are taking the opportunity to drive them down and visit my Granddad, on my Mum’s side, who lives there. He’s lived in the same house for the last forty years, one which he bought for something like two thousand pounds when the family moved out of Moss Side. See, I told you I was nothing like as posh as you think I am, despite my (raised in Moss Side, remember) mother’s determination to surround herself with begonias, organic vegetable patches and copies of Country fucking Living magazine.

So, we’ll drive down, see the gig, say hi to Granddad and then hopefully cook a Sunday roast the next day before coming back to Edinburgh. Sunday roasts are one of my strongest memories of that house. Back when my Grandma was alive Sunday lunch was a pretty bloody big deal – the house was always full and I absolutely always, without fail, got in trouble for quietly disappearing at some point to gnaw on the bone in the kitchen.

Manchester is an odd place for me, though. I suffered massive, massive culture shock when, thinking myself basically English, I moved there from Vienna to go to university. It was a horrible year: I was too foreign to be English, and too English to get the kind of tolerance actual foreigners get, so basically people just didn’t know how to interact with me at all. It was, however, the first time I really started getting into indie music and going to gigs and so on, so I suppose there are advantages to not wanting to spend time with your peers.

The other time I lived in Manchester was when I was inbetween uni and my first job, working in a gangster nightclub (guns pulled, stabbings, brawls, the lot) and with no idea how to actually get a job in my actual professional field. I was flat, flat broke and really fucking fed up – mind you I discovered some great albums then too – inevitably I suppose. So I always think of Manchester quite negatively these days, just because I’ve always been so fucking miserable when I’ve lived there. It’s no fault of the city itself of course, but I really can’t shake that unpleasant reaction I get to the place. And, stupidly, I really like Glasgow and the two cities are virtually identical in almost every sense.

1. Strongest memory of childhood times in your Grandparents’ house.
2. What do you irrationally hate, just because your life was shit when you encountered it?
3. Great album found during a shit time in your life.
4. Where did you go to University, if at all?
5. Most embarrassing muppet you’ve introduced to your grandparents.

The Lemonheads – If I Could Talk I’d Tell You

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Barenaked Ladies – You Will be Waiting

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The Pogues – First Day of Forever

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Yo La Tengo – Cherry Chapstick

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Moby – Run On

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I love Richmond Fontaine, and I didn’t even know this was coming.  This is one of the dangers of getting your snout too deep into your inbox and not keeping an eye on news developing in the wider world around you, I guess, but I spotted it eventually.

I’ve reviewed spoken word albums recently – George Pringle and Money Can’t Buy Music – and treated them very much as song-based records, because I didn’t really see what the difference was in the use of the voice, whether or not the lyrics were being sung.  In this case, I almost find myself wanting to talk about a song-based album as if it were actually spoken word.

Willy Vlautin is a novelist, which I suppose I am probably allowing to influence my relationship with this record, but it shows through in the approach to the music as well.  Several of the songs on this verge on spoken word delivery, and the lovely Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses actually goes all the way.  His lyrical style suits this delivery – unhurried and with a eye for the small details which bring a slowly unfolding story to life.

He certainly doesn’t rush the setting of his scene, which I really like, and the music on a lot of this album is designed to match.  Where they have been at various times quite folky, touched on horn-heavy Americana and hit their electric guitars quite hard, in this case the pace of the album is generally not so much slow as unhurried.  Even the rock ‘n’ roll songs, which is where this album tends to go when it ups the urgency, have a kind of easy gait, even as the pace picks up.

I think it’s that rock ‘n’ roll style which I don’t much like about some of the music.  Generally I really enjoy this, but some of the music is a little bit on the squidgy side – nice enough, but no real edge to it.  That doesn’t happen all that often though, and Vlautin’s storytelling is so satisfying that I can’t help but enjoy the album anyway.  It may not be my favourite Richmond Fontaine record, but I am definitely enjoying it.

Richmond Fontaine – The Boyfriends

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Richmond Fontaine – A Letter to the Patron Saint of Nurses

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